[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

[PhoneLobster]

How the fuck is that not flagrantly illegal, when it's that blatant?

It's being referred to the electoral commission... which apparently Newman blatantly stacked with loyalists. So good luck with that. But yeah it pretty much IS illegal.

But conservatives don't care, the law never applies to THEM, especially when they are desperate.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So, is Syriza going to leave the euro and default or what? They're going to have to shit or get off of the pot soon and I don't think they're in the mood for holding it in.

[PhoneLobster]

So, is Syriza going to leave the euro and default or what?

I'm going to baselessly speculate.

Syriza doesn't need to leave the euro. They however DO need to cut a deal with noticeably less austerity bullshit.

The Eurocrats (I'm gonna call them that, though it's basically a bunch of shite economic aristocrats and Germany) absolutely don't want to give them a deal at all because they are afraid of the precedent that sets and refuse to admit they're economic policies are stupid.

However Syriza DOES have the option of euro exit, and some lesser options that are close enough to euro exit that people will call it that. It's a bad option in a lot of ways because their economy has been seriously fucked over by euro economic policy, local corruption, and then stupid austerity, but if they can't cut a better deal they really don't have anything to lose.

Meanwhile the Eurocrats absolutely cannot permit anything even resembling a Euro exit by Greece as far as they see it that's basically doomsday scenario stuff for their economic hegemony.

And so that leaves the negotiations in an unpredictable and dangerous place with the Eurocrats bluffing a hard line (because they don't dare to cut a deal) but negotiating from a position of weakness (because they absolutely cannot permit Greece to exit the euro).

Expect the eurocrats to cave and cut a deal then try to spin it as stingy and totes what they meant to do.

It is worth noting however that Syriza formed government by getting the support of the far right minority party. They took something like one hour of negotiations to somehow get the support of a party that opposes them on everything... except a hate for the EU mandated austerity program.

That time frame basically means they walked into a room with their bitter ideological enemies, offered them something, those guys accepted, everyone hi fived, and they walked out to form government. If the basis of that alliance isn't "lets fuck over the eurocrats" then what is it?

[Korgan0]

How the fuck is that not flagrantly illegal, when it's that blatant?

It's being referred to the electoral commission... which apparently Newman blatantly stacked with loyalists. So good luck with that. But yeah it pretty much IS illegal.

But conservatives don't care, the law never applies to THEM, especially when they are desperate.

It's only been, what, thirty years since Bjelke? How the fuck does this keep happening in Queensland?

Regarding Syriza, I'm really curious to see what their relationship with the KKE (the Greek Communist Party) end up being like. The KKE trace their lineage back to the communists who fought the nazis and who ended up being violently suppressed by the brits and yanks. They're Old Leninists, who probably see themselves as the KPD of the late tens, and Syriza as the SPD, disdaining newfangled Maoist notions like New Democracy and so on. In other words, they think that anyone non-leninist is just gonna betray them and sell them up the river, and they view cooperation with the national bourgeoisie as being tantamount to death. However, not only do they have a fair few seats, they also have a lot of influence with labour movements and associated bodies. Whether Syriza will try to win them over, ignore them, or try to co-opt the useful bits of them remains to be seen, and of course depends on internal trends and currents within the KKE, which I know nothing about.

[Username17]

KKE announced that they refused to join any coalitions because coalition government is what got Greece into the situation it is in the first place. But very importantly, they didn't promise to not vote for any proposals from the government. Since Syriza only needs 2 votes from outside its own party to pass legislation, it's in a very very strong position indeed. If they want to stick it to the austerity people, they can probably get votes from the KKE and the Independent Greeks. And if they wanted to pass a wishy-washy new liberal agenda they could probably get votes from PASOK. They don't even need whole parties, just literally 2 people in parliament defecting can pass anything the government wants - and there are three parties that could broadly be expected to have members willing to vote for anything that Syriza is likely to put on the table in the next couple of years.

As long as Syriza can hold their own party together, it doesn't look like anyone can call new elections other than Tsipras. And he's only going to call new elections if he thinks Syriza can get an absolute majority - which at present it doesn't even seem to need.

Alexis Tsipras is in a hugely strong position against Belgium. Greece is running a primary surplus, so if the Troika refuses a deal and Tsipras writes off all the debts, government finance doesn't collapse. Greece only needs foreign funding to repay its old debts, not its current obligations. If there's no deal, Greece can walk away and not have to turn to the bond market at all. And it doesn't look like there is any wedge possible in Greek Parliament - Tsipras has enough votes to pass any package from a hardline leftist, a hardline protectionist, to a doveish liberal one.

I'm not sure that the Germans understand how little leverage they have.

-Username17

[Morat]

Well, up to now the German position has been to demand that they be permitted to destroy the Greek economy and keep it from recovering for the foreseeable future, or else Greece will be forced to default and leave the EU...which would lead to its rapid recovery. Christ, these assholes think "If you don't let me beat you up every day until I get bored, I'm going to kick you in the balls once and then leave you alone" is a compelling threat. I'm certain that the Germans have no fucking clue how little leverage they have.

I have read that the EU has prepared for this, and a Greek default is no longer a serious threat to the European economy/financial system, but it's still politically nightmarish for the austerians. If they fold to Greece, pretty soon Spain and Ireland will be demanding a new deal. If they force Greece to default and it recovers, then...their threats of economic doom if crippling austerity isn't held to are shown to be bullshit.

Their only hope is that Syriza folds. But if Tsipras knuckles under, he and all of his party will lose their jobs immediately. Shit, PASOK went from 44% of the vote five years ago to 4.7% this time around. Why on earth would Syriza not play hardball?

[PhoneLobster]

Why on earth would Syriza not play hardball?

The austarians and the incompetent economic aristocrats they represent are never just talking about real economics when they demand austerity and other stupid self destructive policies from victim countries. Hell real economic theory and practice has never been what they are about.

When they say that Greece must obey them or be destroyed it isn't really a warning about unsustainable debt or whatever bullshit they are wringing hands over this week.

It's an implied threat, the subtext is "defy us and WE will destroy you". That's been the threat behind a great deal of the economic "reforms" world wide that have put the world economy into such a shitty state over the last thirty years.

And the economic and austarian aristocrat class genuinely believe they have the power to carry through on the threat. They think the markets will punish their enemies because they think they control the markets. Evidence suggests they are wrong.

Take Australia. Our government defied the austarians and instead of being destroyed our economy came off pretty much the best in the western world from the GFC.

Then the political party that did that was destroyed by conservatives and their media dogs... but that was going to happen anyway so that was hardly attributable as direct punishment for their success.

The aristocrats got their local favored Australian aristocrat tools into government. They implemented austerity and attempted worse, and the economy plummeted, they themselves were punished by the market. And they are perplexed by this event, they genuinely believed that simply being aristocrats in power they would mean that the market which surely was controlled by other aristocrats would rain money down upon them. Seriously, early on they had snide over confident quotes saying as much, about how they didn't even need to DO anything to fix the "economic crisis" they were "left with", because the mere act of conservatives being elected in and of itself had "put the economy on the right track" and boom times would be rolling in any second with a million new jobs created through sheer aristocratic confidence every year! (basically direct opposite of how events played out).

So yeah. For many many years the general consensus has been that if any country commits heresy against mainstream economic theory (ie kleptocratic practices and voodoo economics) the economic aristocracy would destroy them with "market forces".

Turns out market forces don't work like that. But don't expect the incompetent aristocrats to figure that out any time soon. They've never really had a firm grasp on practical economics. That's largely part of the whole problem in the first place.

[Orca]

If the Eurocrats force Greece to default on its debts there likely will be something they can spin as disaster - maybe even a self-fulfilling prophecy if FUD causes a run on Greek banks or something.

There's reason for Syriza not to press all the way, harder than their predecessors in government would be an improvement though. A compromise somewhere would be safer for both sides.

[Korgan0]

If the Eurocrats force Greece to default on its debts there likely will be something they can spin as disaster - maybe even a self-fulfilling prophecy if FUD causes a run on Greek banks or something.

There's reason for Syriza not to press all the way, harder than their predecessors in government would be an improvement though. A compromise somewhere would be safer for both sides.

Greece does have a long history of military coups, in all fairness, and there's a pronounced history of capitalists and capitalist institutions backing hardline military coups.

[Username17]

The Greek finance minister showed up to a meeting with Dijsselbloem in a work shirt that wasn't tucked in and told him that Greece had no intention to follow any instructions from the Troika.



About fucking time someone just told Dijsselbloem to fuck off to his face.

-Username17

[...You Lost Me]

To be fair, I think that's the guy that invented hats for Team Fortress 2. I'm honestly surprised how formal he looks.

EDIT: Looked it up. He analyzed the hat thing, as well as vanity items in DotA and some other things. But he doesn't label himself as a gamer, so I retract my statement.

[PhoneLobster]

Well it may take days yet to know who won the QLD election for certain. But what is certain is that the Liberal National Party, and Newman specifically totally lost it. They took an unnassailable lead of something crazy like a labor opposition with only one tenth or less of the parliament to a hung parliament with no hope of them forming majority government and a strong likelyhood of the majority falling (barely) to their opponents.

On Monday the "mad monk" (our prime minister) is due for a major public speech that has been billed widely (mostly by his own propagandists) as his "new direction defining last chance" moment. They've been planning it since xmas. Well. It's going to be all the more made of desperation now.

The federal party is seen as a curse on the electoral fortunes of the state parties, the "give us another chance we will listen for sure this time" line has been trundled out repeatedly already and then blatantly betrayed repeatedly already. People have turned off to further pleas of "this time for sure!".

The optimistic prediction that if Newman loses QLD then Abbot loses the leadership by Easter DOES seem very plausible. BUT the party that took power based on endlessly whining about their opponents having a leadership spill cannot have a leadership spill, but their actions have been so toxic that they cannot not have a leadership spill.

There are suggestions that Lonely Tony is going to have to have a "medical emergency" and "involuntarily" step down as the only political option left to them.

Every other major option for leader is polling massively ahead of him, and if a federal election were held tomorrow his party would lose harder than they have ever lost before with something like 40 or so of their members wiped out over night.

But to be fair not that long ago the strongest polling individual for preferred leader was "unknown" so people really just literally want ANYONE else.

Anyway, the conservatives here took power pretty much across the board at state and federal levels nation wide, and have historically burned away all their political capital in LESS than one term. The federal party is left with passing on the poisoned chalice to a new leader to destroy his or her career over or letting the current idiot grind their party future into bitter ash.

Abbot's only remaining chance I think is to tough it out until the New South Wales elections, which are perhaps the strongest chance for a Liberal state party to actually win one, and pretend a result there was somehow a vindication or turn in his fortunes. But I can't seem him making it that far very easily, and if he does and the result ISN'T favorable? He will need to change religions because it will take more than just one mad god to save his ass after that.

[Koumei]

Yes, Labor went in with fucking eight seats out of... somewhere between 80 and 90. Currently, it's Labor 43 Coalition 39 (with 45 needed to win). Now last night it hit Labor 44 Coalition 33, so it can still wobble back and forth a bit, but the fact is, "Can Do Campbell!" has failed badly. He even lost his own seat (overwhelmingly), so even if Coalition pull a narrow victory, they need to choose a new premier. Might I suggest a cassowary.

Sadly, Greens don't have any seats, and fucking Bob Katter's Australia party has two. Bob Katter was kicked out of Family First (the ultraconservative Christian party of sexists, racists and intolerance) for being too much of an intolerant fuckwad.

Still, Campbell is clearly suffering the worst failure of a state election ever, and yes, part of it is his history, policies, and corruption. But part of it is just that Abbott is THAT toxic. Various state-level Liberals all around have been trying to distance themselves from the federal Liberal party, with little success.

South Australia remained a Labor state (on a close margin) with the last state election. We were the only one to do that, and Abbott made sure to punish us. Then Victoria set the new trend (as they do) of ditching unpopular Liberal governments, bringing Labor back and even giving the Greens some seats. Now it looks like QLD might follow suit.

Tasmania will almost certainly swing Labor next state election they get. Western Australia and New South Wales will be tricky ones, as I see it, but then again, Queensland. The other states are "probably Labor" next time they get an election. And the sharks are circling in on the federal level.

[PhoneLobster]

Bob Katter was kicked out of Family First...for being too much of an intolerant fuckwad.

Bob Katter is crazy as a fucking loon. However apparently he DID have a significant moment on TV post campaign which sounds brilliant and I wish I could watch a clip of.

It was described as basically this...

The media and the politicians have largely described the election that threw out labor in QLD as a bit of a mystery, and this result now again as a bit of a mysterious surprise.

Some dumb sucker in the media asked Bob Katter about the "mystery". Bob Katter knows no mystery, and Bob Katter isn't afraid to blast out the deeply uncomfortable truth (on the odd occasion it coincides with whatever crazy thing Bob Katter wants to blast out).

So he said something along the lines of "The Bligh government was chucked out because the public hates Privatisation, the Newman Government was chucked out because the public hates Privatisation, it isn't inconsistent swinging voters, the QLD and Australian public just fucking hates Privatisation, and NO ONE in the political parties or the media is prepared to admit in public this obvious bloody fact."

[Cynic]

Yeah, this isn't really science so I am not going to put it in the science category. It's part of a fucking facebook/email chain that my family is passing around.

Hindu Gotras as explained by Genetics.

So this article makes me cry and laugh at the same time.

[Username17]

Yeah, this isn't really science so I am not going to put it in the science category. It's part of a fucking facebook/email chain that my family is passing around.

Hindu Gotras as explained by Genetics.

So this article makes me cry and laugh at the same time.

I got to the part about the shrinking Y chromosome and then my head exploded.

-Username17

[Cynic]

The entire article is completely ludicrous. THe whole part about the Gotra system basically being there to save the Y chromosome from extinction made me laugh at my mother. She was not very happy with my response.

[Koumei]

So, there was motion for a spill in the Liberal party - a vote to decapitate the PM, place his head on a spike and defile the graves of his ance... wait, no, just a vote to replace him.

It failed by eight votes. There was also one informal vote. At first I thought "Even in this, someone draws a dick on the paper", but that's silly: half the people probably drew dicks, it's just that that counts as a vote for Tones.

Still, some might be sad that he wasn't replaced by a less horrifying person like Turnbull or Bishop, but...


Because you see, with him at the helm, the next federal election is a slam dunk for anybody else whatsoever. By which I mean Labor, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more representation from the Greens as further backlash against LNP.

And that is a good thing.

[PhoneLobster]

It's a mixed blessing, It will destroy the liberals, but... if Bill lost the election for labor that might kill off the labor right faction's party dominance. Hell, if Turnbull (with better polls than Shorten) took over from Tony tomorrow the labor party MIGHT just panic enough to finally put let the left wing faction have a go right away, what with Bill having been such a spectacular fizzer.

If Toxic Tony loses the election to Shorten, we could even end up in a topsy turvy world where Labor party right gains power within their party even as the liberal party potentially shifts to the left (via that asshole Turnbull) far enough to perhaps even fall to the left of Shorten's mob of losers.

I'm not saying Turnbull is left wing, but as a genuine center right he is more to the left than the far right extreme elements of labor.

But anyway. while there are some entertaining aspects of the whole thing...

1) Like Tony backflipping on the SA Subs thing to buy a vote to support his leadership from one or two MPs in his own party without consulting anyone let alone cabinet on the same day he was promising everyone he was a changed man who was totally going to stop pulling that sort of shit.

2) Or like how Tony needed to pull a "captains pick" (again, consulting no one) to move the vote forward a day to force a truncated party meeting to prevent debate and cut off one more day of plotting against him in order to save his himself by the skin of his teeth.

3) How before the vote, not having gotten the memo that "liberals do not hold grudes" that was being promoted in the media that morning, a Tony loyalist (the far right tea party faction within the Liberals) described a hated person involved in a prior leadership spill as "The man who nearly tore the liberal party apart". The journalist covering that had to point out he meant Malcolm Turnbull and not Tony Abbot. The reason for this needed clarification is to do with how in the real world Tony Abbot nearly tore the party apart by openly rebelling against the party leader and majority with a minority faction of the party and declaring they would destroy the party if they didn't get handed the leadership (then challenging repeatedly for the leadership and using a duplicitous third decoy leadership challenger to get it in the end).

4) The whole thing where no one actually put themselves forward as a challenger and Tony still nearly lost. Yes that is right, he nearly lost a leadership challenge against NO ONE AT ALL. Alternatively you can interpret it as nearly losing against anyone at all but the first one is funnier.


But aaaaaaanyway... the tangential thing that I've been finding interesting about the whole mess is that there feels like something akin to the USA tea party self inflicted melt down going on here.

Tony is a right wing extremist. He took power within a center right conservative party through grass root lunatic support and vicious internal infighting from a centrist right asshole who was less grass roots and more wannabe technocratic elite twat.

He gained power and started implementing the wet dreams of crazy right wing loons. But it backfired, because the wet dreams of crazy right wing loons lead to failure, economic collapse and universal condemnation.

And now the entire party is caught up in an elaborate catch 22.

The Right wing loons within the party (grass roots and MPs) wanted these policies, but now they want to disown them run away and hide from the consequences, somehow, but without backing down on still wanting and implementing them, because they just can't stop themselves. Tony cannot change his path, but he has to, Tony's supporters NEED him to change policy... but they also still don't actually want him to. They WILL punish him for failure, but they will also punish him if he stops doing the things which inevitably lead to failure.

The party as a whole needs to change policy and at a minimum sack the public face of the entire Abbot debacle and back down on at least three of it's most embarrassing policy failures. But their right wing faction won't let them do that. Especially because their right wing back up replacement leadership contender is of questionable merit, will make all the same mistakes and just plain isn't ready yet.

The left wing (well, less right wing) faction within the party does not have the power to put the right wing faction on the back burner, and even if they did have the ability to they would just rebel and threaten to tear the party apart again if the moderates don't implement the same crazy shit as Tony anyway.

The entire mess doesn't actually get resolved until the right wing nutter faction destroys the party so much that they burn their entire power base to the ground, and by then odds are good most of the moderates are also small piles of former vampire ash, or at least fatally and irreversibly staked and waiting for the next election to execute them for their crimes.

And even if all that happens before the election, and even if the "left" faction of the liberal party polls well compared to Toxic Tony? So what, they poll well with people who aren't liberal voters they have just about zero actual loyalist grass root supporters because those guys are crazy tea party zombies who totally hate those guys.

Fuck it, I give in, I'm just going to do what anyone who follows Australian politics long enough does, from now on I blame Murdoch.

[Koumei]

Fuck it, I give in, I'm just going to do what anyone who follows Australian politics long enough does, from now on I blame Murdoch.

Well it's basically what happens. After the election, many people gave their congratulations to our new PM, Rupert Murdoch.

And recently the Herald Sun* did an article on how this is all our fault, the people have too much influence on politics and what we need is a dictatorship. Yes, the problem is us for having expectations and the ability to vote, not the shitty message they're trying to sell, and could be solved by Hitler. Hitler is the solution. Finally. I wish there were a catchy term for that. They already have the PM they paid for. Their guy is in power!

*Lavatory paper printed by Murdoch's empire. One of many such things

[fbmf]

Are there equivalents iof Hannity and Limbaugh in places outside the U.S? My uncle is going on about how there is not, and Murika's Freedom of the Press is all that allows "quality well researched journalism" (I'm paraphrasing said Uncle) like Levin et al.

I'm calling bullshit. You guys rant about right wing crazies outside the USA all the time, so surely there have got to be non politician commentators who have gotten stupidly wealthy doing nothing but telling these guys how awesome they are?

Game On,
fbmf

[Blade]

For France, Wikipedia tells it better than I could

Serge Dassault, businessman involved in warplanes, and thus in government procurement contracts, (see Dassault Aviation) and senator from the UMP party, owns newspapers including Le Figaro; he famously indicated that he intended his papers to reflect only "healthy ideas" (idées saines) and that left-wing ideas were unhealthy;
the Bouygues group, a major operator of public works and thus of government procurement contracts, owns the TF1 TV channel, which has the largest audience.

I'll just add to this that Bouygues mostly supports the right wing, no matter who's currently in office. Martin Bouygues is friends with many people in the UMP (main right wing party, Sarkozy told that Martin Bouygues is like a brother to him).

EDIT: Also, the TF1 TV channel won't be very vocal about their support. It will mostly be the way they present information, what they'll filter in or out, etc. You won't hear a TV show host saying that the law should be like this or like this. They'll just run a piece on violence in the suburbs showing people with dark skin, and then a piece on the happy life of a white shoemaker in a remote French village who's making wooden shoes the way his father and grand-father did before him.

Le Figaro will clearly support right wing politicians, but most French newspapers are partisan and known as such, and they don't really get rich doing so.

[PhoneLobster]

Are there equivalents iof Hannity and Limbaugh in places outside the U.S?

We have two prominent conservative radio shock jocks here in Australia I can name off the top of my head, despite our lack of freedom of the press, at least as you guys know it.

John Laws and Alan Jones are pretty much Rush Limbaugh but in Australia. They've both been caught up in various scandals in their past, some corrupt practices with advertising, culpability in the Sydney race riots, and in one case an infamous incident involving a police officer and soliciting at a men's public toilet.

Also we have various TV equivalents, the most direct comparison probably being the monumental idiot known as Andrew Bolt.

It's worth noting that in recent years despite remaining a rabid hippie hating conservative (who will never support those filthy commie greenies) Alan Jones has gone a bit off his nut once the government decided to turn his country home town into a giant open pit coal mine and is now both a conservative radio shock jock shill but ALSO an anti mining, anti-fracking crusader, and when push comes to shove his anti mining campaign takes precedence.

Among other things he traveled interstate to run an intensive daily radio campaign AGAINST the conservative government of Queensland in the lead up to the election there. Basically because they personally crossed him on the mining the home town thing.

In some ways he is as much maybe even more aggressively anti-mining than the Green party. While being a conservative shill who hates the Greens for being lefty hippie environmentalists who are clearly way too radical.

Alan Jones is in a weird place lately.

[Stahlseele]

@Koumei

Hitler is the solution. Finally. I wish there were a catchy term for that.

i think the word you might be looking for is final.

[nockermensch]

Are there equivalents iof Hannity and Limbaugh in places outside the U.S? My uncle is going on about how there is not, and Murika's Freedom of the Press is all that allows "quality well researched journalism" (I'm paraphrasing said Uncle) like Levin et al.

I'm calling bullshit. You guys rant about right wing crazies outside the USA all the time, so surely there have got to be non politician commentators who have gotten stupidly wealthy doing nothing but telling these guys how awesome they are?

Game On,
fbmf

There are. Brazil's main television network is fully committed to keep lying for the oligarchs. The current labor government is under a full time siege of lies and distortions because they don't exactly dance to old elites tunes. Picture fucking related:


Everybody panic!